As the Dust Settles in Haiti…

Last Sunday as I was getting my groceries totaled up, the checker asked if I would like to make a donation to Haiti, which I did. The amount was practically nothing, but it did remind me that for the entirety of the previous week, it seemed as if the entire world zeroed in on what was going on that half of the Island of Hispaniola, which was devastated by a massive earthquake on January 12, 2010. News sources consider this the largest earthquake that country had experienced in the last 200 years, and many report an estimated 50,000 lives perished. Events like this always remind me that human life is so precious, yet at the same time, one can never know when life’s flame shall be extinguished.

There were lots of voices chiming in on the Haiti situation, and many of them were quite helpful, instructing people on what they could do to help survivors. I even had an acquaintance share his intention to travel to the island to do some aid work. I say Godspeed!

I also heard a few disheartening voices, which seemed to almost trivialize the present suffering of those in Haiti. Danny Glover’s connection between the earthquake and human induced global warming is a wonderful piece of fiction—but I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Pat Robertson’s statement on the earthquake being the result of a curse the Haitian people carry because they made a pact with the Devil in order to break free of French rule was just taking the unbiblical deliverance spiritual warfare notion of territorial spirits to its lowest level. What nerve! Can one look at the suffering of a Haitian and say, “all this calamity fell upon you because you’re cursed!”

What Robertson (and he should know better) fails to realize is that tragedies like this happen, not because a person has got a whammy place upon him; rather, it is because all of us live in a sinful and fallen world. When asked about the tragic death of some Galileans by the hand of Pilate, Jesus Christ responded, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered this fate? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, were worse culprits than all the men who lived in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2-5). Christ point is that when tragedy strikes, one must not think those spared are righteous and those suffering are unrighteous; rather; He points us to the reality that we—being part of this imperfect world—are likewise fallen in sin, and that the one thing that we are all encouraged to do is to repent and return to the God.

Perhaps, in this situation, for those who have repented from darkness into light, the most God honoring act of worship is to help tend the wounds of the injured traveler on the roadside.